Western Mass. Still Recovering From Tornado 2 Years Later

BRIMFIELD (CBS) — Few can imagine what the residents of Moore, Oklahoma are going through.

Brimfield campground owner Lester Twarowski has an idea.

“There are people just looking around wondering why, and if you dwell on that too long, it’ll destroy you. It will absolutely destroy you.”

Two years ago, a tornado swept through Western Massachusetts, killing a woman at his property called the Village Green Campground, and injuring others.

It left a mess of torn up campers embedded in twisted trees.

“This over here took two years to clean up so far. We’ve been working at it everyday,” he says, pointing to the land he hopes to have cleared out in three years.

Every time it rains, he says people’s personal effects still surface from the ground.

“Wallets, money…pictures, jewelry, your grandmother’s ring,” says Twarowski. “There’s no word that can explain what you feel when you’ve been through this, and then you watch it happen to someone else.”

One of his residents, Edward Ramsdell remembers riding out the 2011 tornado in a truck.

“It just turned black, picked me up, took me for a ride, and put me back. Two trees went on top of me.”

He says he can’t bear to watch images of the Oklahoma tornadoes.

“I don’t want to think about it. It hurts too much…I’m just happy to be alive. I should have been dead.”